Will shale boom change Amish lifestyle?

By ERICH SCHWARTZEL

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Of the Pittsburgh Post-GazetteNatural-gas drilling has brought many changes, including an increase in truck traffic and evidence of instant wealth, to residents of Carroll County, Ohio -- including the Amish community.

The Amish are part of a community that has lived in white homes along New Wilmington’s back roads for decades. They shun technology and embrace an agrarian lifestyle, even though many can’t afford to farm anymore and instead support their families with construction businesses and home-based shops.

A new source of money, however, has come to the Amish of Western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.

They own some of the most coveted land in the nation, and rapid-fire leasing by gas companies is creating millionaires among them -- and disturbing communities worried about greed and envy.

Though many wells have yet to be drilled, the signing bonuses that come with leasing land are life-changing sums. Experts say the gas drilling could subsidize a farming career that hasn’t been economically viable for the Amish for a long time -- a technological means to an agrarian end.

The hydraulic fracturing technology unlocking the oil and gas reserves under their land is the latest energy activity to enter the Amish community, which has long allowed shallow well-drilling and strip-mining. As a result, Amish homesteads are joining “English” -- or non-Amish -- landowner groups and fielding appearances from landmen eager for a signature, all surprised participants watching their tiny, tight-knit communities become mini-boom towns.

The gushers in Carroll County are so famous they make cameos in investor reports. Chesapeake Energy, the main driller in the county, cites production numbers in pitches to shareholders.

“If this is a nine-inning baseball game, we’ve just finished up the national anthem,” said Gary R. Harris, special project coordinator at the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce.

Rex Energy has a permanent storefront next to a hearing-aid repair shop in the town square. Farmers drive Bentleys. The local Ponderosa is said to be the chain’s third-most-popular franchise in all of Ohio.

Officials have even discussed installing a buggy lane on the roads to help horses keep a distance from the new truck traffic.

Amishman John Troyer lives about five miles from some of those gushers. He owns a construction business and his family runs a trade post that sells board games and paperbacks. In 2007, when shale-drilling in Pennsylvania was scarce and in Ohio was nonexistent, he was approached about leasing his mineral rights.

It seemed like free money for parts of the land he wasn’t even using. Troyer leased with Great Lakes Energy Partners for $10 an acre. He made $430 on the deal.

A couple of years later, he was building a house for a Pennsylvania man who was moving to Ohio. When they started talking about the shale-drilling that had proliferated across the neighboring state, Troyer was astonished by what he heard.

“They were saying like $3,000 an acre for out there. I didn’t believe him at all. Well, now it’s just about doubled that here,” he said.

A couple of years later, with the potential for the Utica shale now known, neighbors in the community of about 100 Amish families have signed deals worth $2,500 an acre. Later, Troyer heard at church about some netting nearly $6,000 an acre.

“In a way, you kind of think you’re getting ripped off,” he said. His original lease was swapped by several firms and expired in 2012, but a clause renewed it automatically for another five years even though no drilling had begun.

Still, the boom that surrounds Troyer’s 43 acres is so strong that it made it easier for him to accept the meager $430 he made from leasing his land.

Business at his construction company is strong, thanks in part to Carroll County residents who can now afford to build new houses. Even the traditionally slow winter months have seen an uptick in activity.

“There’s a lot of work out there, and some of it is definitely because of the gas,” he said.

Like many in the Amish community, Troyer owns a substantial plot of land with horses and chickens on it, but doesn’t make his money farming.

Ask 10 Amish people what the ideal career is and nine will say working on a farm, said Erik Wesner, author of “Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive.” He also created www.AmishAmerica.com.

The percentage of Amish farmers who can earn a living off the land has plummeted, and alternative careers have their drawbacks: Construction takes the father away from the family, and tourism invites the English world in so freely.

Millions of dollars in leasing bonuses and royalty checks, though, could start to subsidize a return to that idealized, agrarian lifestyle, said Wesner. By allowing gas drilling on their property, farmers could return to working the land without the worry of profiting from it.

“The technological mix that the Amish accept is quite rational with the goals of what they hope to preserve in the community,” he said.